One Year Gone…

Just over one year ago (the 13th), MC and I drove to the Outer Banks for her younger brother’s wedding. Yes, it was Friday the 13th, and we were out there for the weekend. On the 15th we were driving back when we got a phone call. “One of your cats got out. Snoopy.” Both cats had slipped into the back yard while the dogs were sent out for their business, and were doing whatever cats do while outside. It was something that had happened dozens of times before, but on that day, Snoopy had other ideas.

He found a small crawl-hole in the fence (smaller than him, btw) and when the person who was animal sitting wasn’t looking, he squeezed himself through the hole into the neighbor’s yard. By the time she noticed the last of his black tail sliding under the fence her was bounding across the neighbor’s back yard. By the time she got through the house and out front, her was squeezing himself under the neighbor’s fence and was out in the neighborhood. And he bolted.

Normally, if he were running Snoopy would go a few yards, then stop, drop and roll (the “Rub my belly,” exposure). This time, though, he didn’t. He disappeared into an unmowed fields (lots that are still waiting to be built on. When we got home and into the house, we started canvasing the neighborhood. I walked around with a container of cat treats, rattling it as I went. MC drove around, looking. The next night some of our friends (a couple) came over and we did it all again (this time, with posters, and the ladies went door to door, and the other guy went with me to walk the fields again.

Nothing.

A few calls trickled in about possible sightings over the next week, but he was gone. I had had Snoopy since he was a kitten, only about two months old. He was the only black and white kitten in a litter of white when I got him from the pet store, a few days before Christmas in 2000. He was a few months shy of his 10th birthday when he left.